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Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Got bling?

"Hello, my name is LeAnne (aka "this is my faster!") and I run for medals. It has been 73 days since I received my last finisher medal."

Everybody has their 'thing' that drives them to enter a race and compete. I'm not fast so clearly I don't enter races to try and win my gender/age division (or the event). I enter to get the medal. Not the shirt or the bag or the coupons. The medal.

Runners that don't race will tell you that "sometimes the competition takes the fun out of running". That may be true for them, but since I'm only competing against myself and simply trying to improve my time, the overall spirit of competition is great. That spirit of competition helps carry me through to the finish line. But the medal? Well, the medal is what brought me to the starting line in the first place. It's one of the reasons why I bother to sign up for the event. After all, if you're crazy enough to attempt to run 26.2 miles for fun, you can do that without paying registration fees, right? Although my longest race was not more than 15K (I'm combining the Doubles Ft Lauderdale legs since it sounds fancier that way), it's still a big deal to get up and spend my Saturday or Sunday morning running, so I require a medal for my efforts.

I wish I could wear my medal everyday for one whole month after each event. Not to boast (that's not really my thing) but just to have a "hooray I was able to do it" reminder to myself. But since that would probably be a little weird I keep my medals proudly displayed in my room...

You will notice Kaiyu's artwork in the middle (she is a big Usain Bolt fan)

My own are on the left and Kaiyu's own are on the right (along with all her ribbons from track).

Here is a close-up of my four...

I know it's not an impressive number of medals right now (I only started running a year ago) but by the time I complete my running bucket list it will be a lot more.

After Saturday I will add this one to my wall of bling...

Two more days!!!

What do you think about race bling? Is it important or not a big deal?Which event has the best race bling?